Summary
Michael Green (Logan,Alien: Covenant, andBlade Runner 2049) is hard at work writing the Netflix live-action adaptation ofBioshock.This highly acclaimed video game transported players to the underwater city of Rapture. The game was a story about morality, with Art Deco and Ayn Rand as significant influences. Rapture was a kind of utopia meant to serve as an escape from the tribulations and government control of the mainland societies, but it had a sinister side. As technology in the real world improves,Bioshock’s setting becomes more of a realistic aspiration.
Writers and directors often use their projects to do more than simply tell a story. They use that story to spread a message.The Lord of the Ringsnovelswarned about the dangers of technology, encouraging environmentalism. Chuck Palahniuk wroteFight Clubto comment on consumerism and masculinity. Despite Netflix not revealing the cast or story for theBioshockadaptation yet, it provides a vehicle to tell a deeply relevant story for modern times, as billionaires use their money to create little microcosms of the society they want.
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Bioshock: The Collection
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Bioshockintroduced players to theworld of Rapture, an underwater metropolis created in an alternate timeline’s 1940s. Here, scientists, artists, and entrepreneurs could thrive without government oversight or moral constraints. Rapture’s primary philosophy was that anyone could climb the societal and corporate ranks through hard work and determination — the American dream. The founder of Rapture, business tycoon Andrew Ryan, believed great men carried the world on their shoulders, but the weak held them down, preventing them from making civilization great. He founded Rapture as a place where humanity’s greatest minds could escape regulations and thrive.
The basis behind the city and its founder was heavily rooted in Ayn Rand’s objectivist philosophy, which uses self-interest as its measure of morality and capitalism as the only system that recognizes individual rights. It sounds good initially, but ultimately fails with a bit of scrutiny. In the complete absence of oversight, the “greatest minds” can exploit their employees to serve their needs. That was partly what led toRapture’s downfall.
The city eventually underwent a civil war that saw the utter collapse of Rapture’s society. Promoting self-interest and unchecked ambition as the primary goal for society is bound to attract less-than-savory characters. If they weren’t taking advantage of their laborers, they were being taken advantage of, leading to a life of crime out of desperation. The introduction of ADAM, raw stem cells from a sea slug that could imbue people with special powers (called Plasmids), led to a whole slew of issues.
It’s a fantastic world that acts as a cautionary tale for the bigwigs making long-lasting decisions up on the 93rd floor. Development for the movie was put on hold for a while due to the WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes, but the writing has picked up again. In an interview withCollider, Michael Green said:
Been meeting regularly with Francis Lawrence and his team to refine a draft to go back in. We’re all optimistic. We all love it. It’s a great big sprawling nightmare world we wanna see real. So, here’s hoping. I would love to have an update for you soon.
The Bioshock Movie Can Use Rapture to Make a Statement
There are a lot of people in reality who resonate with Ayn Rand’s philosophy. It’s no secret that most billionaires dislike government interference and unions, the two safety nets that try to make the business landscape fair for those not clearing a million dollars a month. Just as Andrew Ryan created Rapture to escape “parasites” who held down the people with great minds, real-life billionaires have looked to space to potentially create their own private colonies.
Elon Muskfamously announced his goal in 2001 to colonize Mars, when he was a member of the Mars Society’s board of directors. He’s gone on to use SpaceX as a means to create the technology to get humans safely to Mars. Musk most notably purchased the social media company Twitter and has gradually tailored it to fit his interests, blocking those he doesn’t agree with and promoting those he does, despite proclaiming himself a free speech absolutist. Jeff Bezos is another vastly wealthy individual who has used his riches to get himself into space, with his sights on something much larger. His company, Blue Origin, is now working alongsideNASA on various missions to Mars.
ABioshockmovie wouldn’t have to work hard to show the parallels between Rapture and a billionaire’s plan for colonizing other planets. It seems that the best use of massive amounts of money shouldn’t be to create a new colony on a planet 236 million miles away. Those with the advantage of large sums of wealth should instead focus on efforts to improve the planet they already have.
